The New York Times also chimes in on the reduced orders, and they have numbers which seem more realistic. "Apple does appear to be cutting back on orders for its latest iPhone from its manufacturing partners, as Nikkei of Japan and The Wall Street Journal reported earlier. Paul Semenza, an analyst at NPD DisplaySearch, a research firm that follows the display market, said that for January, Apple had expected to order 19 million displays for the iPhone 5 but cut the order to 11 million to 14 million. Mr. Semenza said these numbers came from sources in the supply chain, the companies that make components for Apple products." Some suggest this is stock manipulation, and while that is an exciting story to be sure, would respected and well-informed newspapers like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times participate in something like that? Somehow, I highly doubt it. A far more logical explanation, as NYT details, is that the iPhone simply isn't doing overly well outside of the US.